Considering the strong expansion of the phenomenon over the last triennium, this thesis introduces an extensive research on Equity Crowdfunding, an alternative financing instrument that entails early-stage companies to finance their businesses encountering support from a crowd of small investors. Firstly, the study gives a brief overview of the crowdfunding phenomenon as a whole, describing the different models in place today, along with the most recent figures of both the European and the Italian market. As focal point, equity-based crowdfunding model is broadly analysed through the actors involved in the process, the main steps of a campaign and the regulation in force in the Eurozone (incl. Italy) and in the United States. Then it is displayed an up-to-date outlook of the Italian equity crowdfunding market, focusing on the campaigns launched since its birth in late 2013 until March 2017. Data for this thesis has been collected by means of extensive data-acquisition processes, capturing information publicly available on the internet, eventually resulting in a detailed profiling for 22 successful campaigns and ca. 550 investors (natural persons) which populate our sample. The core part of our analysis was indeed born from these information and it aims at analysing and determining the affinities between investors and proponents during the funding process of an equity crowdfunding campaign. Therefore, recurring to several econometric models, we demonstrated the importance of two main factors which tie ventures and investors (natural persons): (i) the geographical proximity and (ii) the affinity between the industry in which the company operates and in which the investor held a professional experience. Considering that this research field is still unexplored and a nascent-stage phenomenon, the results add new knowledge on the funding process dynamics and offer a starting point for future research.
Considerata la forte espansione del fenomeno nell'ultimo triennio, questa tesi introduce una ricerca esauriente sull'Equity Crowdfunding, uno strumento di finanziamento alternativo che consente ad aziende, negli stadi iniziali del ciclo di vita, di finanziare le proprie attività grazie al contributo proveniente da una folla (crowd) di piccoli investitori. In primo luogo, lo studio effettuato fornisce una breve panoramica sul fenomeno del crowdfunding in generale, descrivendo i diversi modelli che ad oggi esistono, insieme ai più recenti risultati sull'andamento di questi metodi di finanziamento nel mercato europeo e in quello italiano. Quale punto chiave di questo lavoro, viene ampiamente analizzato il modello di crowdfunding equity-based, attraverso lo studio degli attori coinvolti nel processo, delle fasi in cui si suddivide una campagna di raccolta e del quadro regolamentare in vigore nell'Eurozona (Italia compresa) e negli Stati Uniti. Viene quindi mostrata una visione di insieme del mercato dell'equity crowdfunding in Italia, dalla nascita (fine 2013) al marzo 2017. I dati utilizzati sono stati raccolti attraverso lunghi processi di acquisizione di informazioni pubblicamente disponibili su internet: il risultato consta di 22 campagne concluse con successo e di circa 550 investitori (persone fisiche) che costituiscono il nostro campione. A partire da questi dati, nasce la parte centrale del progetto di ricerca, che ha lo scopo di analizzare e di determinare, durante il processo di raccolta in una campagna, le affinità esistenti tra gli investitori e il proponente. Abbiamo quindi constatato, attraverso diversi modelli statistici di tipo Probit, l'importanza di due fattori che legano azienda e investitore (persona fisica): la prossimità geografica e l'affinità tra il settore in cui opera l'azienda e l'esperienza lavorativa dell'investitore. A fronte di un campo di ricerca ancora poco esplorato e di un fenomeno in fase nascente, il risultato raggiunto aggiunge nuova conoscenza sulle dinamiche nei processi di raccolta e offre nuovi spunti per analisi future.
Equity crowdfunding in Italy : a market analysis and an empirical model to measure investor, proponent affinities in the funding process
STRAPPARAVA, MARCO;TRONCATTI, MICHELE
2016/2017
Abstract
Considering the strong expansion of the phenomenon over the last triennium, this thesis introduces an extensive research on Equity Crowdfunding, an alternative financing instrument that entails early-stage companies to finance their businesses encountering support from a crowd of small investors. Firstly, the study gives a brief overview of the crowdfunding phenomenon as a whole, describing the different models in place today, along with the most recent figures of both the European and the Italian market. As focal point, equity-based crowdfunding model is broadly analysed through the actors involved in the process, the main steps of a campaign and the regulation in force in the Eurozone (incl. Italy) and in the United States. Then it is displayed an up-to-date outlook of the Italian equity crowdfunding market, focusing on the campaigns launched since its birth in late 2013 until March 2017. Data for this thesis has been collected by means of extensive data-acquisition processes, capturing information publicly available on the internet, eventually resulting in a detailed profiling for 22 successful campaigns and ca. 550 investors (natural persons) which populate our sample. The core part of our analysis was indeed born from these information and it aims at analysing and determining the affinities between investors and proponents during the funding process of an equity crowdfunding campaign. Therefore, recurring to several econometric models, we demonstrated the importance of two main factors which tie ventures and investors (natural persons): (i) the geographical proximity and (ii) the affinity between the industry in which the company operates and in which the investor held a professional experience. Considering that this research field is still unexplored and a nascent-stage phenomenon, the results add new knowledge on the funding process dynamics and offer a starting point for future research.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/133542